In order to take the moral high ground, you have to actually occupy that territory first...

Thursday, February 11, 2010

About damn time

Top Ten Reasons to Make Gay Marriage Illegal

01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.
02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all like many of the principles on which this great country was founded; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of marriages like Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

I have been an advocate of gay marriage on the grounds of religious freedom for a while. Because no defense of marriage can separate itself intrinsically from that as a final defense. Not tradition, not for the children, at its heart, it is about "preserving" marriage for good people of the Book, who oddly cling to portions of text, while omitting others.

I posit, that when we can outlaw Red Lobster, pulled pork, Lance Armstrong, animal husbandry, psychic hotlines, fashion magazines, autopsies and embalming, mixing tomatos and basil in the same planters, and beard trimmers, they can have their DoMA. But, while we're at it, we need to really up the penalties for adultery, theft, Sunday brunches, and a LOT more stonings for disobedient children, and for damn sure for gossip rags and most of Fox New's coverage of damn near everything as bearing false witness was under the Big Ten.

Leviticus 19:27 reads "You shall not round off the side-growth of your heads nor harm the edges of your beard."

Leviticus 11:8, which is discussing pigs, reads "You shall not eat of their flesh nor touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you."

Leviticus 19:31 reads "Do not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God." The penalty for that? Check Leviticus 20:6: "As for the person who turns to mediums and to spiritists, to play the harlot after them, I will also set My face against that person and will cut him off from among his people."

Leviticus 19:28 reads, "You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the Lord."

Leviticus 19:19 reads, "You are to keep My statutes. You shall not breed together two kinds of your cattle; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together."

Deuteronomy 23:1 reads "A man whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off may never join the assembly of the Lord."

Timothy 2:9 reads "Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments."

Leviticus 11:10 reads, "But whatever is in the seas and in the rivers that does not have fins and scales among all the teeming life of the water, and among all the living creatures that are in the water, they are detestable things to you."

While I realize, that it won't be challenged under the aegis of religious freedom, in my heart of hearts, I want to see these ridiculous claims that same sex marriage has any basis outside religion.

I desperately want folks to put forth a real and concerted effort to try to prove that same sex marriage is a danger, and I want to see their proof. I want to see a defense mounted, so that it can be demolished, and we can put this tripe to rest.

The freedom of religion is exactly why DoMA needs to be dismantled. It is the state advocating religious views to justify restriciting the rights of citizens. And what the advocates who love them some forbidding fail to realize, is that by paving the way for the state to take the view of ministries over others, it opens up a whole can of worms, that our Framers saw long in advance of this. Part of the reason that Jefferson didn't want churches administer government funds for charitable works--by involving the state and binding the state to a religious organization, it paves the way for greater involvement, and making those ministries an arm of the state. And while that is fine for those ministries now, what happens down the road, when the nation swings to another?

DoMA needs to be struck down, not just because it is vile that our state advocates the restriction of rights, but also because it binds the state to ministries, and that is far more dangerous ground. Not just for those who dislike same sex marriage, but then it's a small step to argue for other grand laws to protect people. And that slippery, slippery, slippery slope is exactly what our Framers feared, and were wise to want to keep the state out of religious hair.

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About Me

Hubie was born on the lovely island of Okinawa, moved from there to San Francisco, and then onto Missouri, Texas, Maine, South Carolina, Georgia, Lousiana, Germany, back to Texas, back to Maine, and then onto the Happy Valley of Massachusetts. He considers himself Kraut/Mick/Nip, and is glad to be a bit of a redneck in Yankeeland. Then he moved to another Happy Valley, but damn this is one is a lot more parched... He cooks when he's not Farking, or writing, or Farking, when he's supposed to be writing. He rarely bounces anymore, as he's discovered that excitement and interesting are over rated. He drinks his liquor straight; prefers the company of women to girls, men to boys; and considers himself to be fairly Conservative in the sense that he likes to Constitution as it stands, and is constantly amazed that folks who like the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th sometimes seem to forget the 2nd, and visa versa. He spent some time as a Young Republican, but then got better. He now votes for whoever he damn well feels like.